(Hold your horse...keep reading for the story behind this photo.)
During a recent Pamper Pat Week, I made appointments for several self-care treatments, indulgences I'd been putting off until after my Omicron vaccination and flu shot. When I arrived at one, the aesthetician asked, "Are we doing the Anti-Aging Facial today?”
I shook my head. “We're too late,” I said. “Let’s do the Old Lady with Dry Skin Facial.”
We laughed, and I settled in for the glorious experience that is a facial, a rare treat that I schedule once a year. Afterward, thrilled with my glowing, plumped-up face, I promised to start using an exfoliator again. Some years ago, I had seven or eight bottles and tubes and pots of skincare products that I never seemed to use in the right order or often enough. My current stash consists of a cleanser, a moisturizer and a serum.
Back home, shopping on line for the right product made me mad. The high-priced spreads and “drugstore” skincare products alike all promise “anti-aging” results. A promise is not a guarantee, of course, but this absurd claim is right up there with campaigns that insist certain diet regimens reduce the risk of death. (Good luck with that!) Still, I’m happy to take better care of my skin.
Worthy Books
For over a week, I’ve been crawling into bed at night with Jann Wenner’s book “Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir.” I’m a fan, and have read the award-winning magazine off and on since Wenner, now 76, founded it in 1967 with Ralph Gleason, a jazz critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. When I started reading the memoir, I thought I was well informed about Wenner’s many accomplishments. I wasn’t — he had a hand in far more amazing projects than I’d realized, and the man knows everyone.
The book is deliciously long — 592 pages — and has garnered high praise from Paul McCartney, Bono, Bruce Springsteen and AARP magazine. Bette Midler called it “a rip-roaring and speedy ride through the excesses, excitements, and tragedies of our generation. Alternately thrilling, bedeviling, and deeply moving...unparalleled reading.”
I agree. Today, Wenner’s son Gus runs the magazine, which continues to speak clearly on culture, current events and politics.
Geraldine Brooks’ “Horse” is another extraordinary read. This book on horse racing also covers race relations in our time as well as in the past, takes you into a dusty storage area at the Smithsonian Institution (I sneezed) and even invites you into Jackson Pollack’s art studio. It’s a quick read, even at 438 pages, because you’re so eager to find out what happens next.
A surprise lurks in the end notes, one that’s worth spoiling here. The horse, who raced under the name Lexington, was real, and was considered the best American racehorse of his day, in the 1850s. Brooks reveals that the animal’s mounted skeleton is on display at the International Museum of the Horse in Lexington, Kentucky. A friend who enjoyed the book just bought a plane ticket and plans to pay homage.
Memories of Kentucky
I’m familiar with Kentucky’s “horse country.” A branch of my mother’s family settled there, and when I was a kid we often visited in the summers. (Queen Elizabeth, a horse aficionado, also visited Lexington at least five times, but I’m not certain we ever overlapped.) Our relatives owned a farm and tobacco fields in Nonesuch, about 35 minutes southwest of Lexington. Reading “Horse” summoned dozens of memories from those Kentucky vacations. Here are just three.
Rock fences, mortar-free and known as “dry-laid fences,” once lined the roads and marked off pastures and farmland in the 15 counties known as Kentucky’s Bluegrass region. In their book “Rock Fences of the Bluegrass,” Carolyn Murray-Wooley and Karl Raitz note that early settlers from Scotland and Ireland built the first rock fences in the state and later, in the mid-1800s, "crews of Irish masons built many of the rock fences that bordered the newly created turnpikes” in the state. Some of those Irish settlers, my mother always said, were our ancestors. This still makes me very proud!
One day when I was about 7, weary after chasing chickens, I took a seat in the outhouse at the farm. Suddenly, the wooden door slowly opened, as I hadn't thought to lock it. It wasn't my parents, it wasn't my cousins or anyone else from the house — a cow had come to visit. Nothing like this ever happened at home, back in St. Louis, Missouri! I was a little scared, but I politely introduced myself. Apparently satisfied, the cow moved on.
On another trip, I was in the kitchen with my mother’s Aunt Mamie, who was baking biscuits. When a wasp flew in the open window, I ducked and squealed. Aunt Mamie laughed, grabbed a biscuit cooling on the counter, pulled it apart and expertly clapped the halves around the flying insect. Then she threw the biscuit to a dog in the yard, just beyond the wide porch. The house, which was built in 1906, is still in the family.
Sweet memories!
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